This article originally appeared in the Financial Post. Below is an excerpt from the article.
By William Watson, May 28, 2024
There was a lovely story from The Canadian Press in yesterday’s Post about two Ontario politicians getting together over breakfast recently to invent another feel-good collective right — and, it would appear, at least a six-figure budget line to go along with it. It concerns Ontario government house leader Paul Calandra and Sol Mamakwa, NDP member of the provincial legislature for Kiiwetinoong, a giant riding in northwestern Ontario, which incidentally has only a third the population of the average Ontario riding.
It seems Calandra, best known to Canadians outside Ontario for his tearful apology for providing evasive answers in the House of Commons in 2014 while serving as parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was annoyed by Mamakwa complaining at a Queen’s Park reception that he wasn’t allowed to speak his language in the legislature.
When his staff informed him that was true — only English and French were allowed in the legislature (a basic parliamentary fact a government house leader really should know) — Calandra became even more annoyed and now the rule is English, French “or an Indigenous language spoken in Canada.” On being elected, new members will inform the clerk of the legislative assembly of Ontario which language they intend to use and the clerk will arrange for translation.
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